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THE ABUSED AND THE ABUSER
VICTIM–PERPETRATOR DYNAMICS
Edited by
Warwick Middleton, Adah Sachs and Martin J. Dorahy
The Abused and the Abuser
Severe abuse often occurs in settings where the grouping, whether based around
a family or a community organisation or institution, outwardly appears to be
very respectable. The nature of attachment dynamics allied with threat, discredit-
ing, the manipulation of the victim’s dissociative defences, long-term condition-
ing and the endless invoking of shame mean that sexual, physical and emotional
abuse may, in some instances, be essentially unending. Even when separation
from the long-term abuser is attempted, it may initially be extremely difficult
to achieve, and there are some individuals who never achieve this parting. Even
when the abuser is dead, the intrapsychic nature of the enduring attachment
experienced by their victim remains complicated and difficult to resolve.
This book includes multiple perspectives from highly experienced clinicians,
researchers and writers on the nature of the relationship between the abused
and their abuser(s). No less than five of this international grouping of authors
have been president of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and
Dissociation, the world’s oldest international trauma society. This book, which
opens with a highly original clinical paper on ‘weaponized sex’ by Richard Kluft,
one of the foremost pioneers of the modern dissociative disorders field, concludes
with a gripping historical perspective written by Jeffrey Masson as he reengages
with issues that first brought him to worldwide prominence in the 1980s. Between
these two pieces, the contributors, all highly acclaimed for their clinical, theoreti-
cal or research work, present original, cutting edge work on this complex subject.
The chapters in this book were originally published as a double special issue of
the Journal of Trauma & Dissociation.
Warwick Middleton was the primary author of the first published series on
patients with dissociative identity disorder to appear in the Australian scientific
literature. For over 20 years, he has been the Foundation Director of the Trauma
and Dissociation Unit, Belmont Hospital, Australia. He is a pioneer researcher
in the area of ongoing incest during adulthood; he chairs the Cannan Institute,
Australia; and is a past president of the International Society for the Study of
Trauma and Dissociation.
Adah Sachs is an attachment-based psychoanalytic psychotherapist. Her main
theoretical contribution is outlining several subcategories of disorganised attach-
ment, and linking those with childhood abuse and with trauma-based mental
disorders. She is an NHS consultant and heads the Psychotherapy Service for
Redbridge Borough, London, UK.
Martin J. Dorahy is Director of the clinical psychology programme at the

University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and current immediate past-president
(2018) of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation. His
published work has primarily explored cognitive and emotional underpinnings
of dissociation and dissociative disorders, with a particular focus on shame. His
clinical work is focused on the adult outcomes of abuse and neglect.
The Abused and the Abuser
Victim–Perpetrator Dynamics
Edited by
Warwick Middleton, Adah Sachs and
Martin J. Dorahy
First published 2018
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2018 Taylor & Francis
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
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storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
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infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN13: 978-0-8153-8011-5
Typeset in MinionPro
by diacriTech, Chennai
Publisher’s Note
The publisher accepts responsibility for any inconsistencies that may have arisen
during the conversion of this book from journal articles to book chapters, namely
the possible inclusion of journal terminology.
Disclaimer
Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders for their permission to
reprint material in this book. The publishers would be grateful to hear from any
copyright holder who is not here acknowledged and will undertake to rectify any
errors or omissions in future editions of this book.
Contents
Citation Informationvii
Notes on Contributorsxi
Introduction – The abused and the abuser: Victim–perpetrator

dynamics1
Warwick Middleton, Adah Sachs, and Martin J. Dorahy
1 Weaponized sex: Defensive pseudo-erotic aggression in the

service of safety 17
Richard P. Kluft
2 Extreme adaptations in extreme and chronic circumstances:

The application of “weaponized sex” to those exposed to
ongoing incestuous abuse 42
Warwick Middleton
3 Conflicts between motivational systems related to

attachment trauma: Key to understanding the intra-family
relationship between abused children and their abusers 62
Giovanni Liotti
4 Through the lens of attachment relationship: Stable DID,

active DID and other trauma-based mental disorders 77
Adah Sachs
5 Dying for love: An attachment problem with some

perpetrator introjects 98
Valerie Sinason
6 Predicting a dissociative disorder from type of childhood

maltreatment and abuser–abused relational tie 114
Christa Krüger and Lizelle Fletcher
v
CONTENTS
7 Victim–perpetrator dynamics through the lens of
betrayal trauma theory 131
Kerry L. Gagnon, Michelle Seulki Lee, and Anne P. DePrince
8 Shame as a compromise for humiliation and rage in the

internal representation of abuse by loved ones: Processes,
motivations, and the role of dissociation 141
Martin J. Dorahy
9 Knowing and not knowing: A frequent human arrangement 155

Sylvia Solinski
10 Mother–child incest, psychosis, and the dynamics of relatedness 167

Joan Haliburn
11 Dissociation in families experiencing intimate partner violence 185

Alison Miller
12 Organized abuse in adulthood: Survivor and professional perspectives 199

Michael Salter
13 Treatment strategies for programming and ritual abuse 212

Colin Ross
14 Issues in consultation for treatments with distressed activated

abuser/protector self-states in dissociative identity disorder 223
Richard A. Chefetz
15 Robert Fliess, Wilhelm Fliess, Sándor Ferenczi, Ernest Jones, and

Sigmund Freud 234
Warwick Middleton
End note – A personal perspective: The response to

child abuse then and now 251
Jeffrey Masson
Index259
vi
Citation Information
The chapters in this book were originally published in the Journal of Trauma &
Dissociation, volume 18, issue 3 (May–June 2017). When citing this material,
please use the original page numbering for each article, as follows:
Chapter 1
Weaponized sex: Defensive pseudo-erotic aggression in the service of safety
Richard P. Kluft
Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, volume 18, issue 3 (May–June 2017)
pp. 259–283
Chapter 2
Extreme adaptations in extreme and chronic circumstances: The application of
“weaponized sex” to those exposed to ongoing incestuous abuse
Warwick Middleton
pp. 284–303
Chapter 3
Conflicts between motivational systems related to attachment trauma: Key to
understanding the intra-family relationship between abused children and their
abusers
Giovanni Liotti
pp. 304–318
Chapter 4
Through the lens of attachment relationship: Stable DID, active DID and other
trauma-based mental disorders
Adah Sachs
pp. 319–339
vii
CITATION INFORMATION
Chapter 5
Dying for love: An attachment problem with some perpetrator introjects
Valerie Sinason
pp. 340–355
Chapter 6
Predicting a dissociative disorder from type of childhood maltreatment and
abuser–abused relational tie
Christa Krüger and Lizelle Fletcher
pp. 356–372
Chapter 7
Victim–perpetrator dynamics through the lens of betrayal trauma theory
Kerry L. Gagnon, Michelle Seulki Lee, and Anne P. DePrince
pp. 373–382
Chapter 8
Shame as a compromise for humiliation and rage in the internal representation
of abuse by loved ones: Processes, motivations, and the role of dissociation
Martin J. Dorahy
pp. 383–396
Chapter 9
Knowing and not knowing: A frequent human arrangement
Sylvia Solinski
pp. 397–408
Chapter 10
Mother–child incest, psychosis, and the dynamics of relatedness
Joan Haliburn
pp. 409–426
Chapter 11
Dissociation in families experiencing intimate partner violence
Alison Miller
pp. 427–440
viii
CITATION INFORMATION
Chapter 12
Organized abuse in adulthood: Survivor and professional perspectives
Michael Salter
pp. 441–453
Chapter 13
Treatment strategies for programming and ritual abuse
Colin Ross
pp. 454–464
Chapter 14
Issues in consultation for treatments with distressed activated abuser/protector
self-states in dissociative identity disorder
Richard A. Chefetz
pp. 465–475
End note
A personal perspective: The response to child abuse then and now
Jeffrey Masson
pp. 476–482
For any permission-related enquiries please visit:

http://www.tandfonline.com/page/help/permissions
ix
Notes on Contributors
Richard A. Chefetz is a psychiatrist in private practice. He was President of the

International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (2002–2003),
USA, and is a Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at the William Alanson White
Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and Psychology, USA.
Anne P. DePrince is Professor and Chair in the Psychology Department at the
University of Denver, USA. Her research focuses on how individual charac-
teristics as well as interpersonal, community and spatial contexts relate to vio-
lence/abuse exposure as well as clinical symptoms and interventions.
Martin J. Dorahy is Director of the clinical psychology programme at the
University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and current immediate past-president
(2018) of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation.
His published work has primarily explored cognitive and emotional under-
pinnings of dissociation and dissociative disorders, with a particular focus on
shame. His clinical work is focused on the adult outcomes of abuse and neglect.
Lizelle Fletcher is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Pretoria, South Africa.
Kerry L. Gagnon is a PhD candidate and Graduate Research Assistant at the
Department of Child Clinical Psychology at the University of Denver, USA.
Joan Haliburn is a Clinical Senior Lecturer of Psychiatry at the University of
Sydney, Australia. She is a child, adolescent, family and adult psychiatrist,
Fellow of the Royal Australia & New Zealand College of Psychiatrists and
trained in the Conversational Model of psychodynamic psychotherapy.
Richard P. Kluft is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Temple University
School of Medicine, USA. He has extensive experience in treating victims of
sexual exploitation by psychotherapists, and has served as an expert witness
in several malpractice cases involving boundary violations. His contributions
to the diagnosis and treatment of dissociative disorders and his research on
how to enhance the safety of hypnosis and hypnosis training are considered
landmarks in these fields.
Christa Krüger is a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pretoria, South
Africa.
xi
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Michelle Seulki Lee is a Graduate Teaching and Research Assistant at the
University of Denver, USA.
Giovanni Liotti is an independent researcher concerned with attachment
theory. He teaches at the APC School of Psychotherapy, Italy.
Jeffrey Masson is a writer, best known for his conclusions about Sigmund Freud
and psychoanalysis.
Warwick Middleton was the primary author of the first published series on
patients with dissociative identity disorder to appear in the Australian sci-
entific literature. For over 20 years, he has been the Foundation Director of
the Trauma and Dissociation Unit, Belmont Hospital, Australia. He is a pio-
neer researcher in the area of ongoing incest during adulthood; he chairs the
Cannan Institute, Australia; and is a past president of the International Society
for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation.
Alison Miller is a psychologist in private practice. She worked for many years in
child and youth mental health services, and has come to specialise in working
with survivors of ritual abuse and mind control.
Colin Ross is the founder and President of the Colin A. Ross Institute for
Psychological Trauma, USA. He is an internationally renowned clinician,
researcher, author and lecturer in the field of dissociation and trauma-related
disorders.
Adah Sachs is an attachment-based psychoanalytic psychotherapist. Her main
theoretical contribution is outlining several subcategories of disorganised
attachment, and linking those with childhood abuse and with trauma-based
mental disorders. She is an NHS consultant and heads the Psychotherapy
Service for Redbridge Borough, London, UK.
Michael Salter is Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Western Sydney University,
Australia. His research is focused on violence against women, child abuse,
primary prevention and complex forms of victimisation including organised
abuse and technologically facilitated abuse.
Valerie Sinason is an adult psychoanalyst, and adult and child psychotherapist,
specialising in disability, trauma and abuse. She is registered with the BPC,
ACP and UKCP and is also an SCID-D National Assessor. She established the
Clinic for Dissociative Studies in 1998.
Sylvia Solinski is a psychiatrist at the Malvern Psychotherapy Centre, Australia.
Her expertise is in anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), sexual abuse,
trauma, grief and loss, mood disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder.
xii
Introduction – The abused and the abuser:
Victim–perpetrator dynamics
Warwick Middleton, Adah Sachs and Martin J. Dorahy
From the beginning, humanity has been riddled with brutality. Slavery, human
sacrifice, burning “witches,” publically punishing women for disobeying their
husbands, religious massacres, legitimized torture, grotesque public executions,
and what we would now call inhumane treatment of children (e.g., caning) were
not only common, but sanctioned as central activities in the sociocultural foun-
dation of most societies. Fear was embedded in law, morality, and culture. What
we now look at as the relationship between abused and abuser was at one time
simply the relationship between adults and children (DeMause, 1998), slaves
and their owners, men and women, a perpetrator and his victim, and a prisoner
and his jailer (Şar, Middleton, & Dorahy, 2014). Over the years, our views and
values have changed (Pinker, 2011). In today’s Western culture, such actions
and interactions are largely illegal, or their morality is strongly questioned, even
though they occur with not uncommon frequency. Where brutal interactions
do occur, they are thought to be the cause of trauma: a potentially irreparable
injury to the person’s psyche, and a potential cause of mental disorders.
Modern Western culture holds human rights as a central value, which applies
to everyone. A person of any age, gender, race, religion, or nation should be safe
from degrading or violent treatment. We should all be free to make personal
choices. Our bodies must be respected. Children have to be safe from harm.
While these expectations are still very far from being reached, they do mark our
values and laws. This in itself brings us closer to them than we have ever been
before. It is a great achievement. A disturbing side effect of this achievement,
however, is that where offences against human rights (e.g., child abuse, human
trafficking, torture) continue to occur, they are characterized by greater organi-
zation and concealment.
Dickensian children could be hurt openly, as they were deemed someone’s
property (and referred to as “it”). Generally, today’s children are better off;
but where they are hurt, such behavior is hidden. Silence from perpetrators,
witnesses, and victims create and perpetuate the hidden nature of abuse and
human rights violations. The perpetrators of acts which are now both illegal
and shameful do their best to keep their actions a secret. Witnesses are reluc-
tant to get “involved” and demonstrate an unwillingness to register fully the
perpetration of abuse and act on it. The victims themselves often feel too pow-
erless, too shamed by their weakness, and too contaminated with the evil done
to them to come out from the shadows. And very often, they also feel deeply
connected to their abusers.
1
The perpetrators, their victims, and the reluctant witnesses form together a
complex and highly emotive relationship, bound in secrets and silence. These
are not strangers, but people often who know each other well and play cen-
tral roles in each other lives. Disentangling their relationship from the harm
which is done through it is as painful as the harm itself, and very hard to reach.
Shedding light on this complicated and charged relationship is the task that we
have asked the contributors to this book, to engage with.
As the chapters for this book were being written two unfolding enterprises in
particular, were under way in the world that had the potential to shed light on
the nature of the abused–abuser relationship, particularly where the abuser was
aligned with a powerful, hierarchical institution, which provided both the oppor-
tunity to access victims, as well as protection from reporting and prosecution. The
first of these was the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses
to Child Sexual Abuse, for which Letters Patent were issued on January 11, 2013,
and which as of December 15, 2017, when it concluded, had held 8,013 private
sessions with abuse survivors, had conducted 57 public hearings over 444 hear-
ing days (involving a total of 1,302 witnesses), and had made 2,575 referrals to
authorities (including police) (Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to
Child Sexual Abuse, 2017). The second enterprise was the Independent Inquiry
into Child Sexual Abuse announced by the British government on July 7, 2014,
in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal and persistent reports of other histori-
cal child sexual abuse perpetrated by British parliamentarians and associated
establishment figures. The evidence gathered, as well as the different fortunes of
these two initiatives, provide much to inform perspectives on the relationships
between the abuser and the abused. They, in their processes and findings, serve
as an evolving backdrop for the subject matter covered here.
Chapters in this book address the abused and the abuser from empirical
(Gagnon, Lee, & DePrince; Krüger & Fletcher), therapeutic (Ross), and theoreti-
cal (Dorahy; Liotti; Sachs; Sinason; Solinski) angles, drawing on neuroscientific,
cognitive, affective, attachment, relational, psychodynamic, betrayal trauma, and
animal models, among others. Abused and abuser dynamics are examined pri-
marily in child–adult relationships, with some attention also given to adult dyads
(Miller). Topics still lingering on the fringe of the trauma literature, or those largely
absent, such as mother–son incest (Haliburn), organized abuse (Salter), super-
visory challenges in managing dissociative abuser dynamics (Chefetz), ongoing
incestuous abuse (Middleton), and sexual enactment in the therapy context as a
form of safety (Kluft), are addressed. Reflections of a lived experience of profes-
sional ostracization associated with espousing the reality and effect of abuse are
also shared (Masson). The uniqueness of bringing together such a collection of
papers on the abused and the abuser in this book is reflected in the content initially
being published as the first ever Special Double Issue of the Journal of Trauma
and Dissociation (JTD). For this book edition, one additional paper (Middleton)
has been added, which incorporates an historical perspective on how the field of
psychoanalysis previously engaged with that grouping of dissociative and trauma-
tized individuals subsumed by the diagnostic entity known as “hysteria.”
2
Cover up dynamics and the dynamics of openness
In September 1897, 41-year-old Sigmund Freud, in a letter to Wilhelm
Fliess, who is considered by many to represent the closest male friendship
of his life, famously renounced his “seduction theory” and thus positioned
the about-to-be-born field of psychoanalysis solidly in the province of
Oedipal fantasy, an early and not unwelcome revision as judged by several
of Freud’s peers (Masson, 1984). The particular irony of Freud sharing his
perspective about what he claimed were inaccurate recollections of child-
hood sexual abuse is that he was sharing them with a man who appeared
to be an abuser. In the writings of his son Robert and daughter-in-law
Elenore, Wilhelm Fliess is portrayed as having “ambulatory psychosis”:
“The child of such a parent becomes the object of substantially defused
aggression (maltreated and beaten almost to within an inch of his life), and
of a perverse sexuality that hardly knows an incest barrier (is seduced in
the most bizarre ways by the parent and, at his instigation, by others) …”
(Fliess, 1956, p. xvii). Elenore describes her father-in-law as a man “who
however charming to patients and acquaintances was a tyrant at home. His
children were second-class citizens, from diet to schooling” (as quoted by
Sulloway, 1992, p. 191).
It is clear that right from the time that Freud announced his original theory
regarding a sexual abuse etiology for hysteria in 1896, that the abused and the
abuser have been inexorably entwined. Like many abuse victims, it took most
of his life for Robert Fliess to even briefly draw attention to the fact that despite
the outer trappings of professional respectability, his father was highly abusive.
The fact that Freud and many of his fellow early analysts were sexually abused
as children did not stop mainstream psychoanalysis from de-emphasizing the
reality of childhood sexual abuse (Middleton, chapter 15, this volume). Robert
Fliess hinted strongly of an awareness that many of his fellow psychoanalysts
had been sexually abused as children.
If originally I had held the hope that my findings would be subjected to com-
petent examination, I have gradually become aware that this expectation has on
several counts been unjustifiably naïve. For one thing, from what I have heard and
read, few analysts master Freud’s method to the degree that would enable them to
confirm my findings. Since this holds true for their teachers as well, the average
analyst thus remains ignorant of his own psychotic parent, should he have one,
and hence is not equipped for patients who confront him with fragments that are
replicas of his own history – fragments that should, were he properly ‘trained’ no
longer be traumatic but actually still are (1973, p. 204).
Cogently Fliess went on to reflect,
One is quite generally reminded of the almost daily reports in newspapers where
someone, after having committed a crime so bizarre that it fairly shouts out the
psychosis, faces an outraged judge without showing the slightest feeling of guilt
(Fliess, 1973, p. 214).
3
Years earlier Fliess astutely had observed,

It appears as though the child takes over all of the feelings of guilt over incest that
the parent should have had, but being psychotic, did not. I have never had the
slightest indication that the exploiter felt guilty, but merely that he was afraid of
being found out (Fliess, 1956, p. xvii).
Many extreme abusers live among us hiding in plain sight, frequently not
publicly identified in their lifetime, despite abusing multiple victims over dec-
ades. This points to the existence of powerful long-term dynamics, which cause
the victims to remain silent. Common reasons for such silence are that vic-
tims have been threatened about the consequences of telling, that they have
been convinced that they will not be believed, that they have already experi-
enced poor outcomes from attempts to report ongoing abuse, that the shame
occasioned by accommodating sexual assaults makes them extremely avoidant
about speaking of what was done to them, or that some or all of the details of
the abuse self-protectively got buried behind a dissociative amnestic barrier,
frequently associated with an alternative personality state. Of course some vic-
tims are essentially captives or slaves and have little or no opportunity to tell
anyone who is likely to help, and no one with sufficient power to protect them.
In his early theorizing, Freud gave particular importance to the “pleasure
principle” – the notion that the central guiding characteristic of human func-
tioning was the seeking of pleasure and the avoidance of unpleasure. Repeatedly
putting oneself in traumatic situations or repetitively reliving trauma contra-
dicted the central tenet of the “pleasure principle,” leading Freud, who had
witnessed the carnage of World War I envelop humanity, to seek an under-
standing of the compulsion to repeat trauma that went beyond the pleasure prin-
ciple (1920), leading him to philosophical speculations about a “death instinct,”
which he theorized, when externalized, becomes the source of aggression. In
evolutionary terms, however, where the principle of “survival of the fittest” has
such centrality, a “death instinct” for the human species proved hard to ration-
ally integrate (Breger, 2000). Yet what continues to challenge social thinking,
and is wrestled with in one way or another in many papers in this special issue,
is the compulsion to repeat trauma and/or remain subject to victimization.
Ferenczi in 1932/1984, engaging with the complexity of the dynamic involv-
ing the abused and the abuser, introduced the concept of introjection of, or
identification with the aggressor (Masson, 1984), and over the years there have
been multiple attempts to better understand the dynamics of repetition compul-
sion, the cycles of domestic violence, the nature of trans-generational trauma,
and the dynamics between captor and captive, including the delineation of
the “Stockholm Syndrome.” The latter does not require an actual hostage, but
encompasses strong emotional ties that develop when one side intermittently
harasses, threatens, beats, abuses, or intimidates the other (Dutton & Painter,
1981). Variations on this dynamic are associated with incest scenarios, cults,
concentration camps, prisoner of war camps, the conditioning of child sol-
diers or those perpetrating modern-day slavery – indeed with any enduring
4
relationship where an abuser exerts physical/psychological
control. Increasingly
into the mix there has been a focus on the actions (or lack thereof) of witnesses
or those indirectly aware of the abuser’s actions and the abused’s victimiza-
tion. The bystander effect (anticipating others will respond) and a raft of other
rationalizations designed to neutralize threats to the world being safe, just and
fair, support and promote inaction.
Recent history has seen an important (if insufficient) openness of society to
recognizing multiple forms of trauma, as well as progression of human rights
and the related issues of gender, sexual, racial, and religious/ethnic equality. The
world has patchily become more democratic and an emphasis on human rights
more prominent. The manner in which the relationship between abusers and
their victims maintains silence and acquiescence is the central reason for many
grievous crimes never being reported. And even where they are reported, the
victim’s attachment to their perpetrator is such that police and child protection
authorities are frequently stymied in their actions. Indeed they may rationalize
nonintervention on the basis that such victims are uncooperative, somehow
active participants, or of such low value, as to not merit active assistance – in
effect a powerless underclass.
As a backdrop to a volume concerned with victim–perpetrator dynamics,
it is useful to reflect on a world that has repeatedly found new ways to dis-
miss credible information about trauma and abuse, while society’s established
institutions have on many occasions provided another shelter for abusers to
access the vulnerable and collaborate with other abusers, while being shielded
by processes that protect the institution and thus facilitate victims becoming
expendable. Social media allows the possibility for like-minded perpetrators to
coalesce and expand, creating more victims. The Australian Royal Commission
arguably represents mankind’s most comprehensive attempt to date, to look
very closely at the network of society’s institutions involved in the sexual abuse
of children and the protection of abusers. The Australian findings are of direct
relevance to all comparable societies. The next step will be for a society to simi-
larly look closely at what happens to children in that other “institution,” the
extended family.
There are a great many examples from the last 120 years that followed on
from Freud’s renunciation of his own so-called “seduction theory,” which chart
a progression in our understanding of trauma. Unfortunately, repeated regres-
sions are also very common. A few selected examples are illustrative.
Bleuler’s construct of “schizophrenia” as laid out in his classic 1911/1950 text
effectively subsumed multiple personality disorder (MPD) (dissociative iden-
tity disorder [DID]) as well as hysterical psychosis. By the 1970s, the use of the
diagnosis “schizophrenia,” along with its presumed biological/genetic etiology,
marginalized any focus on trauma as an etiological factor in the causation of
mental illness (Middleton, Dorahy, & Moskowitz, 2008; Ross, 2004). Early stud-
ies that demonstrated the widespread nature of intrafamilial child abuse had lit-
tle impact. For example, in a study of 295 female middle-class hospital patients,
Landis (1940) found that 23.7% had been sexually abused before puberty, 12.5%
by a family member. The Kinsey report (Kinsey, Pomeroy, Martin, & Gebhard,
5
1953) included a finding that of the 4,441 white middle-class females examined,
24% had been sexually abused before puberty, 5.5% by a family member, and
1% by a father/stepfather.
When Leontine Young (1964) published Wednesday’s Children: A Study of
Child Neglect and Abuse, she describes her research beginning “almost by acci-
dent” when she read case records in the public child welfare department of a
small Midwestern city and “discovered this nightmare world within a world” (p.
4). Yet despite widespread press reports including accounts of 662 cases of severe
child abuse published from January through December 1962 in US newspapers
that involved incest and other forms of child abuse, such reports failed to ignite
much scientific study, despite the fact that 178 of the children died as a result
of their injuries. Although the “battered child syndrome” (Kempe, Silverman,
Droegemuller, & Silver, 1962) entered the literature in 1962, the profound psy-
chological effects of trauma were something repeatedly avoided. The publica-
tion of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Second Edition
(DSM-II) coincided with the 1968 Tet offensive in Vietnam. It replaced “gross
stress reaction” with “(transient) adjustment disorder of adult life.” There was
one reference to combat – as “fear associated with military combat and mani-
fested by trembling, running, and hiding” (DSM-II, p. 49). This was categorized
as equivalent to an “unwanted pregnancy.”
When Bowers and coauthors (Bowers, Brecher-Marer, Newton, Piotrowski,
Spyer, Taylor, & Watkins, 1971) wrote about the therapy of MPD, there was lit-
tle reason to believe that a dissociative disorders field would form or that their
paper would be other than another orphan.
Holroyd and Brodsky in 1977 opened another window into the complex-
ity of victim–perpetrator dynamics when they reported on a sample of 1,000
psychologists. Of the 70% who completed the survey, 12.1% of male psycholo-
gists and 2.6% of female psychologists acknowledged having had erotic contact
with at least one opposite-sex patient. The same year saw the publication of
Rush’s feminist analysis, “The Freudian Cover-up,” no less than 80 years after
Freud retreated from the field of researching child sexual abuse. Seven years
later Jeffrey Masson, armed with access to key correspondence from Freud to
his then friend, Fliess, extended the examination of the relevant evidence as to
why Freud abandoned his seduction theory when he published, The Assault on
Truth: Freud’s Suppression of the Seduction Theory (see Masson this book).
DSM-III was published in 1980 and it included as entities with diagnostic
criteria, borderline personality disorder, multiple personality disorder (MPD)
(which was renamed dissociative identity disorder [DID] in the DSM-IV), and
post-traumatic stress disorder. A fledgling coalition of those aligned with the
psychological processes of traumatized veterans and researchers who incor-
porated a feminist perspective was in evidence. Important books and papers
soon came out on issues related to the sexual mistreatment of children and its
impact, including within the sacrosanct confines of the family (e.g., Herman,
1981; Russell, 1986; Yates, 1982). But again these largely failed at the time to
ignite widespread scientific interest in abuser–abused dynamics.
6
The year associated with the introduction
of the United Nations Convention
on the Rights of the Child, 1989, saw the publication of the first comprehensive
texts on the diagnosis and treatment of MPD (Putnam, 1989; Ross, 1989). By
this time, a brewing challenge was evident for the dissociative disorders field.
There was a renewed focus on therapeutic boundaries, the nature of human
memory and influences on it. The trauma field found itself having to scientifi-
cally address with urgency the challenges of what became known as the (false)
recovered memory debate. An organization (the False Memory Syndrome
Foundation) came into existence claiming that no one “forgets” major trauma
and alleging that large numbers of practitioners were practicing a form of ther-
apy that created false memories of abuse that had never in fact occurred. At
one level, it assumed that therapists were capable of wielding enormous psy-
chological power – manipulating the minds of patients to convince them that
major sexual traumas had occurred in their childhood. But it became appar-
ent that where individuals initially recovered memories of past sexual traumas,
therapy was not the usual precipitant and the degree to which memories can
be truly completely created appears to have been inflated (Brewin & Andrews,
2016). Those whose trauma involved betrayal seemed more likely than others
to experience amnesia for their childhood trauma (Freyd, 1996; Middleton, De
Marni Cromer, & Freyd, 2005). Elliott and Briere (1995) reported that a history
of “complete” memory loss was most common among victims of child sexual
abuse (20%), while a substantially higher proportion of such victims had sig-
nificant amnesia for particular details of their traumas. This indicated, as did
later research, that ongoing child sexual abuse required a profound adaptation
on the part of the victim in respect to living with their abuse.
The year 1992 marked the publication of Judith Herman’s classic integrative
text, Trauma and Recovery (1992a) as well as her initial description of Complex
PTSD (Herman, 1992b). The same year saw the first major book dealing with
the US Catholic Church child abuse scandal (Berry, 1992). The Catholic Church
became a focal example of the role institutions can play in the widespread sex-
ual abuse of children, a role that is the antithesis of their reasons for existing,
but now uncovered, has much to teach on how institutions and the abusers’
standing within them can be incorporated into the abuser–victim dynamics.
Speaking directly to dynamics involving the abused, the abuser and those
that bear witness or have knowledge of what has occurred or is occurring,
300,000 Belgian citizens in 1996 marched in protest at perceived cover-ups by
police and compromised politicians concerning the serial killer and pedophile
Marc Dutroux and his accomplices. In 2000, there was the initiation of a Royal
Commission into sexual abuse of children by members of the Irish Catholic
clergy. Two years later, the Archdiocese of Boston was the focus of worldwide
attention as it became apparent that in excess of 10% of its priests had been
involved in the sexual abuse of children (Sullivan, 2002; France, 2004).
In 2008, the case of Josef Fritzl attracted global attention. He had impris-
oned his daughter Elisabeth in an underground cellar for 24 years while treat-
ing her as a sexual slave who bore him seven children. This brought with it an
7
unprecedented press focus on cases of ongoing
sexual abuse during adulthood
from around the globe (Middleton, 2014). The fact that this form of extreme and
enduring abuse (which frequently has a trans-generational dimension) could
have been reported on in a piecemeal manner for a century and a half before the
first scientific investigation into populations of such victims is illustrative of the
ineffectiveness of child protection agencies and police in substantiating such
abuse, even when there have been repeated notifications, as well perhaps as cau-
tion from a trauma field still assimilating the lessons of the Satanic Ritual Abuse
controversy and the so-called “memory wars.” It also speaks of the effectiveness
of perpetrators (themselves seemingly frequently the victims of similar abuse)
in maintaining high levels of control of their victims. Such victims usually had
not been permitted to develop enough selfhood to establish ownership of their
own bodies or to feel other than fused with their primary abuser (Middleton,
2013). Thus, further complexity is added to the abused–abuser dynamics.
In 2011, “Operation Rescue” was publicly revealed, involving an interna-
tional police operation that destroyed the largest pedophile-oriented network
in world history, one that had in excess of 70,000 members (Casciani, 2011).
The following year there was global exposure of the (mainly) child sex abuses
perpetrated by prominent TV personality, charity supporter, and friend of
Prince Charles, Jimmy Savile, who had amassed some 500 victims over a period
that extended beyond 50 years (Middleton, 2015).
Where the abuser enjoys the status and protection of established and power-
ful institutions, not only is there the opportunity to join with similarly oriented
abusers who have much the same access to victims by dint of their roles, there
is an institutional allegiance that is invoked to keep victims and their families
quiet, as well as keeping any investigations of abuse “in house” and away from
the public’s gaze. Victims are repeatedly sacrificed to protect the reputation and
assets of the institution.
Not until he became the Archbishop of Sydney in 2001 was there ever a sug-
gestion that Australia’s most senior Catholic clergyman Cardinal George Pell
might, himself have abused children. In 2002, he stood aside for some months
while a church-appointed commission investigated allegations which, in the
end, a retired Victorian supreme court judge found not to be proven. Pell played
a leading role in severely limiting any compensation victims of Church-related
sexual abuse might receive from the Church (Marr, 2014). Pell, the third most
senior Catholic clergyman in the world, created history when he appeared in
the Melbourne Magistrate’s Court on July 28, 2017, in respect to charges that
he personally sexually abused children. Victoria’s Deputy Police Commissioner
confirmed there were multiple charges and multiple complainants. In the free
world, a cardinal has never been charged with criminal offences before.
In 1973, Father Gerald Ridsdale and Father George Pell had been both
located in a parish within the city of Ballarat (Victoria), living together in the
parish house of St Alipius in Ballarat East. As detectives interviewed more of
his victims, Ridsdale, one of Australia’s most notorious pedophiles, who had
originally been sentenced in 1993 was brought back to court in 1994 and in
2006 and in 2013 to be sentenced again. Pell and Risdale lived merely meters
8
away from a ring of pedophiles who operated
out of St Alipius as teachers. They
included Edward Dowlan, Robert Charles Best, Gerald Fitzgerald, and Stephen
Francis Farrell. As of 2015, the Catholic Church had spent in excess of $1.5
million in legal fees on Best, despite many of his victims suiciding and despite
him, along with Risdale, being identified as among the very worst of Australia’s
pedophiles. In 2015, the Christian Brothers said they would welcome Best back
into their ranks upon his release from prison (Mannix & Donelly, 2017). In the
years following Ridsdale’s reign of terror at St Alipius, his accusers were silenced
or dismissed. Instead, church authorities moved Ridsdale around to other par-
ishes, including Elsternwick in 1980 and Horsham in 1986 (Marr, 2014; Morris-
Marr, 2015). Many have commented that it seemed a little incomprehensible for
Cardinal Pell to have been living in the middle of a community of pedophiles
and to have remained completely unaware of what was going around him. Pell,
via a video link to a Rome hotel, would explain to Australia’s royal commission
in respect to Fr Risdale’s abuse in Ballarat, “It was a sad story and of not much
interest to me.” He sat on a church committee that transferred Father Gerard
Ridsdale from parish to parish. Risdale’s crimes were known to the bishop and
familiar to other members of the committee. But by his own account, Pell never
inquired why this priest was always on the move. In giving evidence from Rome
to the royal commission, Pell admitted the pattern of Ridsdale’s movements
between parishes was “somewhat unusual,” even by the “standards of the time.”
Cardinal Pell maintained he was never told about Ridsdale’s offending. “It prob-
ably would be possible to imagine a greater deception but it’s a gross deception,”
he told the royal commission (Whitsunday Times, 2016).
In May 2015, Gerald Risdale gave video link evidence to the Australian royal
commission – he revealed that the Catholic Church was aware of his abuse from
the early 1960s, more than a decade earlier than previously thought. When
however counsel pressed repeatedly him to admit that he must have told church
officials about his abuses, Risdale responded with a litany of claimed memory
failings: “I can’t remember any of this. . . . I don’t know. I don’t think so. I can’t
remember. . . . I’ve got no recollection of it. . . . I probably would have, but I
don’t remember anything – anything specific about it” (Australian Broadcasting
Corporation [ABC], 2015).
When “Jason,” one of Risdale’s many victims, by then in his early 20s, finally
tried to reveal to his family that he had been repeatedly raped by Ridsdale, his
father and brother walked out in disbelief (Astbury, 2013). Bill White, the judge
in the final case concerning Father Ridsdale, reflected that the Church’s strategy
of moving him from parish to parish paradoxically provided him with even
more opportunities to sexually abuse children (Astbury, 2013).
The full extent of the Catholic Church’s crisis was revealed in February
2017 when it was announced 7% of priests in Australia’s Catholic Church were
accused of sexually abusing children between 1950 and 2010. Commissioners
surveyed Catholic Church authorities and found that between 1980 and 2015,
4,444 people reported they had been abused at more than 1,000 Catholic insti-
tutions across Australia, said Gail Furness, the lead lawyer assisting the com-
mission. The average age of the victims was 10.5 for girls and 11.5 for boys. The
9
average time it took between a victim being abused and reporting it, or seeking
redress, was reported as 33 years (The Telegraph, 2017). The worst-offending
institutions, by proportion of their religious staff, were shown to be the orders of
brothers, who often run schools and homes for the most vulnerable of children.
Over 40% of the members of the Brothers of St John of God had allegations of
child sexual abuse made against them from 1950 to 2010. For other orders the
percentages were Christian Brothers (22.0%), Salesians of Don Bosco (21.9%),
Marist Brothers (20.4%), and De La Salle Brothers (13.8%). The worst dioceses
in Australia in terms of the weighted average of priests accused of being perpe-
trators were Sale in Victoria (15.1%), Sandhurst in Victoria (14.7%), Port Pirie
in South Australia (14.1%), Lismore in New South Wales (NSW) (13.9%), and
Wollongong NSW (11.7%) (Blumer, Armitage, & Elvery, 2017). Forty percent
of the victims who gave private testimony to the royal commission stated they
had been sexually abused by clergy/representatives of the Catholic Church.
Another 20% described being abused by individuals associated with other reli-
gious groups.
Ms Furness revealed the Holy See had declined a request to hand over docu-
ments involving Australian priests accused of abuse. “The Royal Commission
hoped to gain an understanding of the action taken in each case,” she stated.
“The Holy See responded, on July 1, 2014, that it was ‘neither possible nor
appropriate to provide the information requested” (Bowling, 2017).
In a revolutionary recommendation regarding the relationship between church
and state, the Australian royal commission in mid-December 2017 advised that
legislators in Australian states and territories should enact laws to specifically
overrule the confessional seal, a recommendation that would require mandatory
reporting to police from priests who hear confessions concerning child abuse
(Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, 2017).
Greg Thompson resigned in 2017 as Anglican Bishop of Newcastle, NSW.
As a 19-year-old youth, he had been sexually abused by a previous Bishop of
Newcastle, Ian Shevill (McCarthy, 2015, 2017). Bishop Thompson had set out
to properly investigate accusations of pedophile rings operating for many years
within his diocese. The opposition he and his coworkers encountered was extraor-
dinary, but for those familiar with institutional dynamics, sadly predictable.
One of Bishop Thompson’s coworkers, ex-policeman Michael Elliot, on
national television said, “I would say what I’ve seen in the Anglicans has been
worse than what I’ve seen in the Catholics.” He described massive intimidation
by those with reputations to protect, “There was a period where I moved house
five times within a 12-month period. And each time, they found me and within
a very short period of time, two to three weeks, began targeting me again.”
A fellow investigator John Cleary, stated, “I was subject to a death threat just
before I was due to give evidence in the Supreme Court, which on advice from
the police and with the support of the Church’s insurer, they agreed to relocate
me and my family for a period of two weeks . . . Yeah, I have no doubt that it
put pressure on my marriage and my family life.” Bishop Thompson observed,
“What’s particularly distinctive about the story of abuse in this diocese is the
10
habituated protection of perpetrators and the undermining of survivors as they
came forward. It was like a religious protection racket” (ABC, 2016).
Opponents of Bishop Thompson used the Royal Commission to try to
advance a novel ploy. A group of leading members of the diocese, which
included a former Newcastle Lord Mayor and solicitor Robert Caddies, wrote
to the senior Royal Commissioner, Justice Peter McClellan, questioning why
Bishop Thompson had taken many years to disclose the fact that he had been
sexually abused by clergy as a teenager, and thus by extension, placing others at
risk by taking so long to come forward.
There was a torrid exchange at the royal commission between Justice
McClellan and Caddies, the group’s solicitor.
Mr Caddies was probed about the letter signed by him and sent to the royal
commission earlier in 2016 raising “grave concerns” about Bishop Thompson.
“Can we cut to the chase, you were seeking to have him removed, weren’t you?”
asked commission chair, Justice Peter McClellan.
Mr Caddies acknowledged that there was “certainly a great unhappiness”
and some of that related to the defrocking of his friend, former 13th Anglican
Dean of Newcastle Graeme Lawrence in 2012. While Mr Caddies contrib-
uted to fund-raising efforts, organized by some church members to help Mr
Lawrence fight his defrocking, he admitted to the commission that in line with
the evidence, he now accepted that Mr Lawrence abused children (Marchese,
2016). Brian Farran, the then Anglican Bishop of Newcastle in September 2012
defrocked three Anglican priests, Graeme Lawrence, Bruce Hoare, and Andrew
Duncan, over allegations of child sexual abuse dating back more than 30 years
(ABC, 2012). Another abuser, teacher Greg Goyette, was permanently banned
from teaching.
The royal commission heard that Mr Lawrence groomed and sexually abused
a boy in 1981, after his first abuser, Anglican priest Andrew Duncan, told him
that Mr Lawrence was “part of the family.” The man (who can only be iden-
tified as CKH) gave public evidence at the royal commission that he was 15
years old when he was first sexually abused by Graeme Lawrence, and that he
was abused by a number of Mr Lawrence’s associates, going back to age 14.
CKH said Bishop Farran did not want to defrock Mr Lawrence. “He was in
tears about the difficulty of his decision, and the effect it would have on the
parishioners.” While giving evidence at the royal commission, a sullen, angry
Lawrence stonewalled for two days, denying any sexual relationship had ever
occurred with CKH. The evidence revealed the opposite. Counsel presented a
number of sexually explicit letters and cards with pictures of naked men, and
depicting sex acts, that either Lawrence or Goyette had sent to CKH. Included
was a card from Lawrence which had a photo of a young man touching his erect
penis and captioned, “Thank heavens for little BOYS! For LITTLE BOYS GET
BIGGER EVERY DAY . . . ” In Lawrence’s handwriting was a message, “Now
isn’t that true?! Enjoy the card. Thank Heavens! Much love G” (Manne, 2017).
In 2015, Bishop Thompson had issued an historic apology to child sexual
abuse victims in the Newcastle/Hunter region. He said the diocese believed
11
more than 30 child sex offenders had abused
children over a period of decades.
Graeme Lawrence had led a Griffith group of child sex offenders to the Hunter.
The royal commission heard that Lawrence, was in a “gang of three.” The other
two were defrocked priest Bruce Hoare and Peter Mitchell (who had been sub-
sequently jailed for stealing nearly $200,000 from the diocese). This group pro-
tected a notorious and sadistic Hunter pedophile priest, Peter Rushton, who
frequently abused children in the company of fellow abusers. Rushton moved
to the Hunter region in 1963 and died in 2007 without ever being charged.
Rushton’s record was littered with complaints of sexual assault spanning 40 years
(Smith, 2016). From the 1980s to the 1990s, Graeme Lawrence, Bruce Hoare,
and Peter Rushton were part of the leadership team in the diocese (McCarthy,
2016).
A witness at the Royal Commission, CKH, reported he was 14 years old
when first sexually abused by church deacon Andrew Duncan and 15 years old
when he was first sexually abused by Graeme Lawrence, and that via Lawrence
he was to be sexually abused by Greg Goyette, Bruce Hoare and Graeme
Sturt. CKH’s abuse allegations were finally sent to a church hearing. CKH told
the Commission that Newcastle Bishop Farran did not want to defrock Mr
Lawrence, stating, “He was in tears about the difficulty of his decision, and the
effect it would have on the parishioners”, but Lawrence, Duncan, and Hoare
were ultimately defrocked (Cox, 2016b).
The commission heard that Mr Keith Allen, diocesan council member and
solicitor, was stood down by Bishop Thompson because he was in a group that
sought to defend the accused priests. The commission heard how Allen fraudu-
lently, had one sadistic abuser, Hatley Gray, write a predated resignation letter
so that he could be “in good standing” with his bishop at the time of his resigna-
tion and could thus go to another diocese.
Justice McClellan asked him, “And what you sought to defend was, do you accept
now, indefensible?”
Mr Allen replied, “Probably indefensible.”
Justice McClellan put to him: “That’s because it was a ‘do nothing and a cover
up and protect the church’ approach, wasn’t it? And you were part of that practice,
weren’t you?”
Mr Allen responded, “Yes.” (Cox, 2016a)
On July 7, 2014, the British government, under sustained pressure from

various politicians, and appreciating growing public concern, announced an
unprecedented public inquiry into the processes that resulted in minimal or
no investigation of the alleged organized sexual abuse of children involving 10
current and former MPs. A second broader inquiry was established to examine
how for decades there was an apparent suppression of allegations of child abuse
involving public officials (Middleton, 2015). These inquiries have staggered, fal-
tered, and still not fully taken shape to offer smooth and effective functioning.
The first two chairs, Baroness Butler-Sloss and Fiona Woolf, stepped down in
response to concerns related to their perceived closeness to institutions and
12
individuals they would be investigating. There were concerns too regarding the
limited scope of the inquiry and the lack of ability to compel witnesses to tes-
tify. On February 4, 2015, Dame Lowell Goddard was named as the new chair,
the existing panel was disbanded, and the enterprise was given new powers
as a statutory inquiry. By August 2016 Goddard had resigned, citing among
other reasons, the inquiry’s “legacy of failure which has been very hard to shake
off ” (Laville, 2016). Professor Alexis Jay became the inquiry’s fourth chairman,
inheriting a role that was being dubbed as being “the most toxic job description
in public life” (Coleman, 2016).
The first public hearings of the British inquiry commenced in February 2017
and were focused on the post war child migration programs. One victim, David
Hill, who became both chairman and managing director of the Australian
Broadcasting Corporation had been sent, along with his twin brother and older
brother to the Fairbridge farm school in Molong, NSW. He gave evidence that
in his estimate 60% of the children sent to the school were sexually abused there
(Laville, 2017).
By June 2017, the group Survivors of Organised and Institutional Abuse
announced their withdrawal from the inquiry, stating it was “not fit for purpose”
and that it had become a “very costly academic report writing and literature
review exercise” (The Guardian, 2017a). Giving evidence to the Independent
Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, former British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown,
in July 2017 said the mass transportation of 130,000 British children overseas
between the 1940s and 1970s amounted to “government-enforced trafficking”
and that the program probably represented the country’s “biggest national sex
abuse scandal” (The Guardian, 2017b).
In 2014, a commissioned report by Professor Jay had found that at least 1,400
girls in Rotherham, some as young as 11, were left unprotected from abuse by
gangs of men, mostly of Pakistani origin, over a 16-year period, as authorities
were too afraid to reveal the existence of a race issue. More than a third of the
children were already known to child protection authorities (Brooke & Infante,
2014), another example of the sort of institutional betrayal focused on by Freyd
and her colleagues (Freyd & Birrell, 2013; Smith & Freyd, 2013, 2014).
The capacity for dissociation enables the young child to exercise their innate
life-sustaining need for attachment in spite of the fact that principal attachment
figures are also principal abusers. Those who abuse long term, frequently extend
their abusive activities to include fellow abusers, who in turn exert additional
pressures on their victims to maintain silence. Such structures, whether they
be familial multigenerational networks or based around work mates, churches
or other institutions, pedophile rings or child prostitution businesses, may be
difficult to fully document, let alone disassemble, due in part to the victim’s
strong attachment to their principal perpetrator. This apparent loyalty speaks
of a real need to understand the complex dynamic involving the abuser and the
abused, a dynamic in which an appreciation of attachment theory, the cocon-
struction of self-perception and identity, the nature of shame and its capacity to
erode selfhood to the point that any form of assertive action gives way to dutiful
13
compliance, the psychology of betrayal, and the ways in which sexuality can
become a very live issue for the therapist, are pivotal concerns.
We are informed by a history in which abuser–abused dynamics have been
central to the cyclical pattern of much domestic violence, where making public
utterances about presumed abuse that go beyond the available data has proven
to be immensely problematic, and yet where we need to be very nuanced in
understanding the history of much of society’s reflex denial, a denial voiced
loudly by many abusers but also on occasions by the abused, and those who
witness, or know of the violation. This book tackles such issues.
We are very grateful to our authors for grappling with this complex topic and
for the depth and creativity of their thinking, to Jennifer Freyd and the JTD for
allowing us to produce the original special double issue, to the Cannan Institute
for its generous support, and to Routledge for hosting the publishing of this
book, derived from the JTD Special Double Issue. We very much hope that this
edited book will inspire further thinking, debate, and research into the thorny
complexities of relational abuse.
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16
ARTICLE
Weaponized sex: Defensive pseudo-erotic aggression in

the service of safety
Richard P. Kluft, MD, PhD
ABSTRACT
Problematic sexual behaviors are frequently encountered in
the treatment of patients suffering Dissociative Identity
Disorder and related forms of dissociative disorders. These
may include unfortunate patterns of ready acquiescence or
submission to overtly or potentially aggressive or sexual
approaches/encounters, subtle and/or overt seductive signal-
ing and behaviors, and even overt sexually provocative pat-
terns of verbalizations and actions. This paper discusses the
possibility that in some instances, sexual behavior has become
weaponized; that is, deployed in circumstances under which
assertiveness and/or aggression or other self-protective mea-
sures might be expected, probably because such behaviors
were not within the range of the possible or were not under-
stood as potentially successful for some victims of trauma.
Clinical manifestations are described and discussed. An animal
model in which sexual behaviors substitute for aggressive
behaviors is described. A speculative hypothesis is offered,
postulating that in some cases, such patterns in traumatized
humans might represent an epigenetic response to exogenous
trauma. Exploration of this model may lead to improved under-
standings and approaches to trauma victims who manifest
such behavior, hopefully destigmatizing them further, facilitat-
ing reduction of their shame and guilt, and supporting their
recoveries. Clinical interventions are suggested.
Introduction
Patients suffering Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) and allied conditions
frequently manifest problematic sexual behaviors. These may persist in the
face of DID patients’ clear (but usually rapidly rationalized, denied, and/or
dissociated) appreciations of their deleterious consequences. Ranging from
mild to quite severe, they may remain refractory to the advices, injunctions,
and insights of concerned others and/or mental health professionals. They
include disorders of diminished desire and/or aversion; conflicted gender and
sexual identities (Stoller, 1973); activities ordinarily classified as perversions
(Brenner, 1996); and/or powerfully driven pressures to enact particular
17
sexual scenarios and/or actualize pressures to activate particular patterns of
sexual behaviors under particular circumstances (often accompanied with
claims that such scenarios/practices are necessary, undertaken without mis-
givings or conflicts, and in some instances, experienced as immensely plea-
surable and satisfying).
Here I will discuss the powerful pressures experienced by a small minority
of dissociative women to engage others in sexual activities, even at the cost of
disrupting their adult lives and/or their psychotherapeutic encounters. My
perspectives are drawn from the study and treatment of women with DID.
Some perspectives advanced here are admittedly speculative, presented as
food for thought at a moment in time when biological aspects of trauma and
the trauma response are subjects of increasing interest.
Novel contributions to the understanding of complex phenomena are
merely new chapters in a long, long book, much of which remains to be
written. This “chapter” both looks back over 44 years of clinical experience
and forward toward developments in branches of molecular biology still in
their infancy.
I have spent over four decades working with victims of sexually-exploitive
therapists, clergy, and similar figures of authority. I have also worked with
offenders. This body of experience has convinced me that the highly cen-
sored and politically correct vagueness customary in discussing such situa-
tions, the understandable emphasis on the unwanted consequences to the
victim, and the unfortunately perfunctory attention paid to the second party
apart from condemnation, together contribute to an unfortunate overall
failure to communicate the complexity, urgency, and intensity of what
might have transpired within the context of the clinical encounter.
Professionals who respond to sexual provocations, however extreme, are
indisputably in the wrong. But too often the rapid attribution of blame
preempts potentially informative study of what transpired in the minds and
actions of both individuals and the occurrences within the relational dyad
antecedent to, during, and subsequent to boundary violations. Neither an
avoidance of the potentially prurient, militant defense of the victim, nor
passionate excoriation of the perpetrator promotes nuanced understanding.
Antecedents to such transgressions are studied by psychoanalysts (e.g., Celenza,
2007; Gabbard, 1995; Gabbard & Lester, 1995). However, among traumatologists,
similar explorations of the relational contexts of such incidents are often derailed
by strident sexual politics. Recently I presented the same clinical material to
psychoanalytic and trauma meetings only months apart. The former group was
receptive, but among the latter some rapidly adopted a hostile attitude, accusing
me of misogyny quite early in my presentation.
Withholding detailed descriptions to appease those who find them odious
squanders educational opportunities advantageous to the welfare of actual
and potential victims of exploitation. Three examples follow.
18
First, assuming the desirability of reducing mental health professionals’ mis-
understanding and/or making inappropriate responses to such provocations,
and of enhancing their sensitivity to such behaviors, from subtle to extreme, it
seems wise to provide them with anticipatory socialization and desensitization,
reducing the likelihood of dysfunctional therapist behaviors. In 1971, before my
residency group was either taught the rudiments of sex therapy or assigned
actual sex therapy patients, we were required to spend two full days watching
and discussing tapes of incredibly intimate and detailed sexual acts of all varieties
in order to deprive these acts of their potentials for prurience, shock, and
arousal. Thereafter, we could view and/or listen to clinical material involving
such activities with minimal countertransferential arousal/distress responses.
Second, clinicians’ failures to explore these materials openly may increase
the likelihood that their first intense and overt exposures to such provoca-
tions may find them unprepared, vulnerable to becoming over-stimulated,
deskilled, and overwhelmed.
Third, an aversion to exploring these situations denies the clinician the
vicarious opportunity to learn from others how to see such situations begin
to emerge, anticipate the likely next steps, and nip them in the bud.
Luborsky’s symptom context studies (Luborsky & Auerbach, 1969;
Luborsky & Mintz, 1974) demonstrated that the triggers for symptoms
emerging in sessions can usually be found in a transferential reference within
the several hundred words antecedent to the onset of the symptoms. I use
this method to identify and interdict as many of these episodes as possible.
Given that the small minority of patients to whom I refer often express an
inability to control their sexual behaviors, I will characterize such circum-
stances, and ask if we can attempt to understand driven, compulsive, dys-
functional sexual enactments as determined, in some instances, at least in
part, by more or less involuntary neuropsychobiological phenomena. Finally,
I will share what I have learned about the psychotherapeutic management of
unwanted sexual provocations in the consulting room.
Preliminary considerations
My interest in the driven dysfunctional sexuality of DID patients began with
a patient who reported abuses so similar to those described in Sybil
(Schrieber, 1973) that I assumed she had read the book, notwithstanding
her denial. Astonishingly, both parents confirmed her allegations. Her
mother assured me that she had been psychotic when she mistreated
her daughter. Now she knew she suffered paranoid schizophrenia and took
her medication conscientiously. Her father explained he had not intervened
because raising children was “the women’s work.”
Perhaps preoccupied by processing the acknowledged maternal brutality,
our work had not addressed her claims of sexual abuse by a male relative, or
19
perhaps I overlooked relevant indicators. One evening I did not recognize the
individual sitting in my waiting room, wearing a clinging, low-cut “little
black dress.” Assuming she was someone else’s patient, I had turned to leave
the room before she called out, “Afraid of me, Doc? I don’t bite!”
Thus began my first encounter with a flagrant, over the top sexually
aggressively alter presenting me with a confrontational, provocative, and
challenging seductive relational field. I had never understood why my patient
had been fired from a series of demanding jobs. Soon it became clear she had
repeatedly seduced her immediate supervisors so flamboyantly that her
resignation was demanded.
I had been taught that if a person incessantly repeats a behavior, however
dysfunctional, something within that person was driven to bring these
recurrences about; that is, at some level (conscious, unconscious, or both)
the person “wanted” such outcomes, or was compelled to repeat problematic
behaviors in the service of mastery. Yet when I tried to interpret such
understandings to my first traumatized dissociative patients, anger, mortifi-
cation, self-harm, suicidal impulses, and even suicide attempts/overdosing to
drive away pain, were not uncommon. I rapidly arrived at the then-
controversial conclusion that such lines of thinking situated both blame
and shame within the victim in a rather simple-minded and unproductive
manner (Kluft, 2016).
In 1973–1974, there was much to learn, but little guidance or precedent.
The literatures of trauma and dissociation had yet to flower. In despera-
tion, I began to study revictimization. It would be years before the burgeon-
ing literature of feminist thinkers and the contributions of early explorers of
therapist/patient sexual exploitation (e.g., Gartrell, Herman, Olarte, Feldstein,
& Localio, 1987; Herman, 1981; Pope & Bouhoutsos, 1986) would become
available. My early efforts taught me only that such situations were best
approached by applying the empathic and interpretive perspectives of Kohut
(1971, 1977), with attention to selfobject transferences.
In studying a cohort of men and women who had experienced therapist–
patient sexual exploitation, I found that all proved to be victims of parent–
child incest and suffered diagnosable dissociative disorders (Kluft, 1989, 1990).
Of course, the unlikely conjunction of these three factors was a sampling
artifact due to my referral streams at the time rather than a firm basis for
more general understanding.
I was forced to reconsider the role of classical Oedipal dynamics. Had
Oedipal triumph fixated these male and female patients into a repetitive
pattern of seducing/accepting seduction by authority figures, such as thera-
pists, physicians, clergymen, and the like? Clinical experience demonstrated
diverse rather than uniform dynamics at play. Pope and Bouhoutsos (1986)
published a complex list of dynamic formulations, to which I added some
others (Kluft, 1989; 1990; see also Celenza, 2007; Gabbard & Lester, 2005).
20
Even when my patients’ sexualized behaviors demonstrated profound com-
monalities, their underlying unconscious dynamics showed surprising diver-
sity. My conclusion was that their vulnerability to revictimization resided
largely in the persistence of instrumental behaviors that had served these
patients well within the contexts of their abusive childhoods, but contributed
to recursive cycles of dysfunctional and life-disrupting actions in their adult
lives.
The more I worked with traumatized patients the less erotic their
expressed sexuality appeared to be. They rarely demonstrated either erotic
desire or responsiveness as these terms are normally understood. This con-
tributed to my describing “the sitting duck syndrome” (Kluft, 1989, 1990),
the perversion of many aspects of normal coping and relatedness, including
sexuality, into patterns designed to maximize safety and minimize damage
and distress in dangerous and abusive environments.
It was helpful to understand their “sexual” issues as instrumental, as
tactical and strategic enactments in the service of trauma-perverted concepts
of safety. But what optimized damage control in environments in which at
any second they might become the helpless targets of aggression, sexualized,
or otherwise, sabotaged them and diminished their safety in other settings.
What created primary gain in abusive settings occasioned substantial
secondary loss in others, resulting in ongoing vulnerability to revictimization,
compromised object relations, and a diminished quality of life.
The concept of such weaponized sex/instrumental pseudo-erotic behavior as
other than genuinely erotic may be easier to grasp when compared with a
different but more familiar form of aggressive nonerotic sexual behavior, rape.
Rape involves the enactment of sexual behaviors driven by self-gratifying
destructive aggression enacted in the service of power, domination, and sadism
rather than in the service of mutual affection and shared erotic engagement.
Weaponized sex encompasses a wide and sophisticated array of strategies
that utilize sexual behaviors or the implication of possible imminent sexual
behaviors to seek safety, to cope with a threatening interpersonal world (and
sometimes a world of internalized object relations as well) in which strong
unambivalent committed attachments are not firmly established. In weapo-
nized sex, processes and interactions that at first glance appear flagrantly
sexual have minimal erotic significance or meaning. Nonetheless, these
behaviors (and usually the insistence that they are erotic) are profoundly
valued and clung to with desperation as coping and survival strategies.
Clinical encounters with weaponized sex/instrumental

pseudo-eroticism
A professional woman from a conservative religious background believed
that having angry feelings made a person evil; she deemed this emotion
21
completely unacceptable. After many years of therapy, angry affect began to
emerge. Shortly thereafter, she went into an altered state during session,
exposed her breasts, and struggled to force my hands upon them. Despite
my best countermeasures, this behavior recurred in over a dozen consecutive
sessions, always both disremembered and denied. We slowly came to under-
stand that these behaviors expressed both (1) the emergence of an intolerable
wish to murder me (her abusive father in the transference); (2) her reenact-
ing defending herself against her homicidal impulses and her father’s/my
possible reactions to them by offering herself sexually; and (3) erotic feelings
toward me. She had dissociated several efforts to kill her brutal father, after
which he had nearly beaten her to death. In her contemporary life, this
pattern was demonstrated in rapid acquiescence to sexual approaches by
powerful men, and in smiling and beginning to unbutton her blouse if a
powerful man began to express anger toward her. She never had consensual
sex with a lover, but she had become sexually involved with many of the men
under whom she had trained or worked, all such experiences banished from
memory by amnesia.
My efforts to share my findings about such situations did not fare well in
the heated gender-sensitive atmosphere of the 1990s. I was attacked for
“blaming” the patients and “excusing” various perpetrators. Few besides my
recovered and recovering patients were ready to consider that working with
these episodes actually generated non-shaming and effective clinical inter-
ventions that restored the health, dignity, and functionality of victimized
women, often even allowing them to lay claim to their healthy sexuality for
the first time in their lives.
Hence, the importance of providing colleagues with sufficiently detailed
illustrations to facilitate the process of bringing the study of this matter out
of the shadows and subjecting it to the circumspect thought and study it
deserves. Left inadequately characterized and censored beyond recognition
under the aegis of political correctness, this important topic can neither be
understood nor explored in a meaningful and reasonably objective manner.
Vignette 1
My adolescent friends and I spent years infatuated with one particularly
beautiful young woman who would walk along “our” beach, oblivious to us.
She became involved with any number of “biker types,” but took no notice of
us college/professional students. Naturally, we called her “The Girl from
Ipanema” after a line from Jobin’s song: “Every day when she walks to the
sea, She looks straight ahead, not at me”(Jobim, de Moraes, & Gimbel, 1964).
Flash forward 25 years. A new patient was referred by a senior and
respected colleague. He ended our conversation with, “Rick, you’re holding
my career in your hands.”
22
I quickly learned that this patient had been sexually involved with the
referring psychiatrist, she suffered a dissociative disorder, and she was “The
Girl from Ipanema.”
By the end of my first conversation with this beautiful but unfortunate
woman, her erotic appeal had vanished. Her over-the-top sexuality had been
no more than the desperate strategy she discovered helped her cope with the
vicissitudes of her tragic life. She came to believe that she was nothing more
than a slut, and that readily offered sex provided her only guarantee of semi-
safety and semi-acceptance.
When she perceived that a man was angry or displeased with her, an
alarmingly aggressive sexual pattern was triggered, during which she went
into an altered state, often started to undress, and/or might began to touch
the man. This had occurred with two previous therapists. One had just
expressed his frustration over her lack of progress, the other had just
begun to push her to pay a higher fee. Other aspects of her situation are
discussed elsewhere (Kluft, 1987, 1990).
I conducted her entire therapy with a kind smile on my face. I helped her
see that what she thought was her nymphomaniac out-of-control promiscuity
with “bad boys” was her automatic submission to any man she experienced
as actually or potentially threatening. Both her DID and her weaponized sex
became things of the past.
Vignettes 2 and 3
When I describe rather dramatic instances of weaponized sex (because they
are the most difficult to manage and pose the greatest threat to patient,
therapist, and therapy alike), my efforts to convey that the most common
expressions of weaponized sex are passive, subtle, and difficult to discern are
easily overlooked or misunderstood. More frequently, the patient begins to
respond to what she perceives as cues that another person is expecting/
encouraging/inviting/demanding the sexualization of their relationship.
This may take the form of elaborating material with seductive potential,
responding to what she believes are hints that sex is expected, and encoura-
ging/escalating physical contacts that begin innocently enough (not overtly
sexual), but progress toward more dangerous ground. They can build upon
what are ostensibly expressions of a more conventional positive transference,
be expressed as responses to a therapist’s remark/behavior that may have a
countertransference-based double entendre, or simply occur in reaction to
some ostensibly neutral interaction capable of being interpreted, idiosyncra-
tically, in a sexualized manner.
Thoughtful patients have educated me by sharing their insightful self-
observations. One woman hugged me impulsively at the end of a consulta-
tion we thought would be our only meeting. When she became my patient
23
years later, she hugged me again. I thought she would feel unduly rejected if I
set limits at that point. Session-ending hugs remained brief and perfunctory
for nearly a decade. Then she began to press one, and then both breasts
against me quite firmly. Before I succeeded in finding a tactful way to broach
this subject, she took the initiative.
“Dr. Kluft, I’m realizing that some of the others are trying to seduce you.
I’m sure you’ve noticed what I’ve been doing. And something’s making me
want to grind against you, down below. Please don’t push me away. Some of
the others wouldn’t understand. They’d feel rejected. The rest of us will get
this under control. I think they really do believe that you are my father, and
they have to make sure you’ll love them enough so you will feed them. They
think if they don’t please you, you’ll tie them up and shock them. If they
don’t get you to have sex, they’re afraid you’ll really hurt them and let them
starve for days. They just came into the therapy. I guess we finally felt safe
enough to let them out. I thought they understood who you are …. We didn’t
realize they didn’t understand us. They didn’t believe you were really safe,
and they were going too far. They were sure they were doing what you
wanted them to do.”
Often sexualized communications transpire without being recognized by
other alters and without the therapist’s either comprehending them or being
able to find a way to discuss them. Sometimes therapists find themselves
in situations in which they feel compelled to make confrontations that may
make no sense and/or even may prove offensive to the parts at the surface at
the time confrontations are made.
I generally walk my patients to the office door at session’s end. One
woman who had shown no previous aggressive sexual behaviors suddenly
turned and tried to kiss me on the lips. I was so caught off guard that I pulled
away only at the last moment. She acted as if nothing had happened. Later I
referred to this instance and suggested that we talk about it. She insisted that
it never had happened, that I must be having sexual fantasies about her or
mistaking her for someone else. Five years later the memories of the involved
alters leaked into the awareness of the others.
Vignettes 4, 5, 6, and 7
Often emergent weaponized sex can be identified and addressed before it
achieves behavioral expression. Four years ago, in a single morning, three
consecutive female patients who had been exploited by prior therapists
boasted that all the men they had been with told them that they gave the
best oral sex in the world. They were not sexually aggressive in their
behavior, but the way they discussed their expertise resembled a fisherman’s
attempts to present the precisely correct bait to the fish he is trying to catch.
24
One patient’s therapy was quite advanced. Our relationship was very warm
and friendly. She found she was experiencing increasingly strong loving
feeling toward me, including strong erotic desires. These parts were coming
close to both acknowledging their transference fantasies and mourning the
impossibility of realizing them. At the same time, other parts felt unable to
trust me. They feared that acknowledging affection toward me would facil-
itate inevitable betrayal and mistreatment. Simultaneously, some protective
parts (who had taken the brunt of the sexual mistreatment and developed
strategies of damage control that involved taking the lead to influence which
sexual acts took place) had decided to preempt my inevitable unveiling as an
abuser by seducing me.
Sensing but certainly not understanding her distress, I intervened to
explore and found myself in conversation with parts prepared to become
more aggressive. “You’re no better than any other man,” one said. “I’ll show
them what a bastard you are. Then they won’t let you get anywhere near
them.” I did not attempt reassurance. Instead, I responded by encouraging
their protective vigilance. I neither set limits nor overtly rejected their ideas
or proposed action plans. We kept the matter conversational. Her treatment
is nearing a successful conclusion.
In the second, the moment I spoke, my patient switched into an alter
unaware of what had been said moments before. She was shocked and
outraged by what I tried to share. Finally, I said, “At this moment I am
talking to you while you are in a state of mind that has no recollection of
what was just said. I know that in this state of mind you would prefer that I
let the whole matter drop. But I can’t. Something was going on that
prompted the conversation I remember, and you say you don’t recall it. If I
don’t try to deal with it, it may be pretty crazy making for those among your
system who do remember it. So, let me say that something must have
happened, or may have been triggered, that led to that conversation. I suspect
that it was something that made some parts of your mind think they were in
a sexual or potentially sexual situation. They are not. I think something
scared them, and in some way what some of you have blocked out was
designed to get me to think about letting you do something sexual to avoid
something far worse.”
My patient switched and responded, “He always wore black slacks. Why
are you wearing black slacks? You never wore black slacks before. When he
wore black slacks ….” Some of her patterns of thought identified me as a
perpetrator who wore black slacks and treated her brutally, a man whose
cruelty often could be diverted if she took the lead and provided fellatio.
The third patient arched her back and pushed her chest forward when I
spoke to her. She was firmly convinced that I would only give her really good
therapy if I really liked her, and that the only clear proof that I liked her
would be my complimenting her sexual prowess on the basis of first-hand
25
experience. She held fast to this conviction for over a year. Interestingly, her
husband was her prior therapist.
At times, this sort of “fishing” with milder expressions of weaponized sex
points directly toward previously unrecognized or unshared transgressions.
After 2 years of treatment, one patient began to slip into a younger adoles-
cent state. She attempted to present herself as confident, sexually inviting,
and receptive, but her fearfulness undermined the power of her pretensions.
“But if you fucked me, I would never tell anyone. Really! I promise!” Material
gradually emerged concerning exploitation by a mental health professional
who had treated her during her teens.
Vignette 8
Although dramatic and sustained instances of weaponized sex are encoun-
tered infrequently, when they do occur they can present significant manage-
ment challenges. A small number of patients have disrobed completely or
partially. A smaller number have (while clothed or unclothed) masturbated
to orgasm while verbalizing sexual invitations, and fewer still have even
raped/stimulated themselves with objects despite my efforts to contain
these situations. Recently, some younger individuals have sent me erotic
“selfies” although most alters had remained oblivious to these “communica-
tions.” Many such situations initially require psychiatric management and
first aid rather than insight-oriented interventions.
The following vignette depicts a chaotic situation lurching toward disaster.
Fortunately, it proved workable. The patient is a skilled professional whom I
will call Elizabeth. She has had affairs with two and possibly three prior
therapists, with several of her professors, and with supervisors both during
her training and subsequently. She knows I know some of these individuals.
Prior to the interaction recounted below, Elizabeth had alluded to sexual
mistreatment by a family member. She rapidly withdrew her remarks and
tried to evade exploring what had transpired. When I renewed my request
that we discuss what had happened, things changed rather dramatically.
Elizabeth did not switch completely, but other alters surged up near the
surface, and/or were copresent.
“Do you fuck all of your patients, Dr. K., or just the ones who make it clear they want
you? Don’t you think people really have to make love in order toreally know one
another?” (Elizabeth leaned forward.) I bet I can figure out a better use for that couch.
What would you do if I just started to take off my clothes? (I omit several minutes of
subsequent lubricious verbalizations and gestures. Finally, Elizabeth put her hands to
the buttons of her blouse.) What will you do if I start to unbutton my blouse?”
“As I ask you what you are trying to communicate by that kind of gesture, I will
be throwing those Afghans over there on top of you, one after another, hoping to
26
help you begin a treatment rather than start up some kind of sexual flying circus. I
hope what’s happening now will give way to a reasonable conversation.”
“And if I don’t stop ....”
“When I run out of Afghans, I walk out of the office and will have nothing
further to do with you.”
“I’m not accustomed to men refusing me. But then maybe you’re not a man?”
“The world is full of possibilities. But my working with you while you shed your
clothes is not among them.”
“Think of what you are missing.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“OK, OK. You got around some of us. I had to try to see if there was another
way to get the upper hand. You haven’t convinced me yet. So what do you think?”
“I’m sorry. What do I think about what?”
“These.” (Elizabeth had her hands under her breasts, and lifted them.)
“Oh. I think that you are misusing them, trying to turn them into weapons you
can point at me to intimidate me. Let me put it this way…. You seem on the one
hand to be coming for help, after years of unsuccessful therapy with many
therapists, some excellent, some not so excellent, and some … Who knows? On
the other hand, you are very much afraid of the therapy you say you want to
receive. You are already serving notice that you haven’t quite made up your mind,
consciously, unconsciously, and everything in between, that you are ready to
address what you need to address. You forced yourself to open a door, slammed
it shut, and then you turned your efforts toward disrupting our ability to commu-
nicate in, shall we say, a more traditional way?”
“OK. So you’re not turned on at all?”
“By what?”
“By all … you know.”
“Elizabeth, what I have seen is a very scared woman trying to reassure herself that
she can survive in this office and distract our work from what scares her the most.
Whether that’s to continue to avoid something you feel can’t be faced, or whether
you’re testing me to see whether you can be safe in here and ultimately reach what you
need to reach, I don’t know. But someonewho’s scared, sad, and using sexuality to
‘whistle in the dark’ is not conveying a powerful sexual message, at least not to me.”
I left unsaid that anyone who would present in such an over-the-top

manner must have endured some regrettable experiences to have developed
such a coping style. Some therapists who claim patients have seduced them
have mistaken dysfunctional action defenses for what they describe, at least
in their trials or ethics hearings, as libidinal messages of compelling power.
Vignette 9
I do not pretend to have a complete understanding of a phenomenon I will
describe as “weaponized sex in the service of the ego.” While it could be argued
that all patient activities serve a communicative and potentially therapeutic
purpose, here I refer to a conscious, controlled, and quite deliberate effort to
place sexual matters before the therapist in the effort to facilitate recovery.
27
A patient had made incredible advances but persisted in one florid risk-
taking behavior. For example, every night at a particular hour she did her
hair and make-up to perfection, put on high heels but no other apparel, and
paraded back and forth in front of the all-glass wall and sliding glass door of
her apartment for over half an hour, visible to many neighbors and pas-
sersby. We made little headway addressing this behavior. She became con-
vinced I could never understand the remainder of her problems unless I
knew the truth of the experiences she was unable to communicate in words. I
expressed confidence in our ability to work through the remainder in stan-
dard therapy. For the first time in our work together, she disagreed with me,
quite vehemently.
Several weeks later she brought in some pictures she said might explain
important concerns. We sat side by side to view and discuss them. The first
few simply depicted her apartment with its glass wall and sliding door. As I
came to a deeper appreciation of the extent of the risks she was taking and
began to express my concern, she rapidly flipped through a series of pictures
she had taken of her own body as she had felt forced to reenact what she
could not let herself share in words, depicting horrible mistreatments of her
breasts, her face and hair smeared with feces, and her mouth full of fecal
material and toilet paper. Caught off guard, I could not avoid seeing them.
“This is what you have to help me with. Parading naked by that window
was just to draw them in. We were shooting a porn film in the red light
district of Amsterdam. But this,” she said, pointing to the terrible degrading
pictures, “this is what I had to deal with.” She vomited over and over into my
wastebasket. “Sorry, but this is the only way I could tell you.”
Our therapeutic alliance was sufficiently powerful to allow us to move
right on through this material. My patient told me that while she had no
doubt that her naked body would turn me on, and she acknowledged a
degree of concern that I might find her torture and degradation so stimulat-
ing that I would want to enact it with her, she trusted our warm regard for
one another and my many years of not reacting in a predatory manner to the
incredibly provocative and stimulating material she had presented. Our
relationship, she said, would allow the situation to be safe, and help her
carry out what she had concluded was her only path to recovery.
Would we have been able to access this material without such a radical
display? She thought not, I thought we could. After showing me these
pictures, her dangerous behaviors ceased immediately, and the remainder
of her trauma work was completed rapidly. Perhaps she was the wiser
member of the therapeutic dyad, but I can find no ethical way for a therapist
to propose the deliberate use of such material. She is nearing the termination
of a very successful psychotherapy.
28
A naturalistic model of weaponized sex
Confronted with numerous instances of an unexpected phenomenon that did
not seem to share common dynamic underpinnings, but did seem to be an
adaptation that once facilitated survival and minimized rejection and physi-
cal brutalization, I searched the literature for information and found little.
There were many thoughtful studies that offered overall explanations based
on the study of individual cases, but having found dynamic diversity rather
than commonality among my “weaponized sex” patients, I found these
authors’ generalizations from particular cases or presentations in terms of
a priori theoretical assumptions profoundly unconvincing. Certain models
encompassed the dynamics and structures of particular instances quite well,
but in my opinion the driven, forceful aggressiveness of many of these severe
behaviors eluded satisfactory explanation.
Another literature, however, contained thought-provoking observations.
Scientists were studying recently discovered tribes in a certain area of Africa
whose members engaged openly in both heterosexual and homosexual beha-
viors and erotized their young. They resolved virtually all threat and conflict
situations by engaging in sexual behaviors. Arguments over food were
addressed by joining in erotic practices, and then sharing the edibles in
contention. When one tribe encountered another with territory or food at
stake, the two sides rushed toward one another, often led by the most
dominant females, and engaged in sexual intercourse and other erotized
activities with their putative opponents, ending the confrontation.
The conflict resolution and acculturation patterns described above are
those of the bonobo (Pan paniscus), the most recently discovered and the
most diminutive of the great apes (see Blount, 1990; de Waal, 1988, 1995,
1997; Furuichi, 1989; White, 1996). Bonobos may be described as promiscu-
ous, polymorphous-perverse hominids that engage in missionary position
sex, French kissing, oral sex, bisexual activities, and the erotization of their
young. They are unusually empathic and supportive to one another, clearly
reading and responding to one another’s emotional states. They seem to have
the rudiments of a conversational language. They can learn to recognize and
use computer programs to express over 500 human words (de Waal, 1988).
Their females have prolonged estrus cycles and enormous clitorises. Their
vulvae become engorged quite rapidly. While the females in other great ape
genera come into estrus for rather limited periods of time, bonobo females
have much more prolonged periods of sexual activity and receptiveness to
sexual approaches. They do not form exclusive dyadic bonds. They affiliate
rapidly with new individuals or groups of individuals by engaging in sex.
Violence among bonobos in integrated groups is infrequent, relatively mild,
and transient. It is rarely sustained sufficiently to result in injury. By human
standards, what is normative in the society of bonobo, the so-called “make
29
love, not war” ape, might appear to represent a complex series of sexual
deviations and an ongoing attachment disorder.
Bonobo behavioral patterns differ dramatically from those of the other
great apes; that is, gorillas, orangutans, and chimpanzees (de Waal, 1995;
White, 1996). Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), for example, are known for
their aggressive and violent behavior and their proclivity to resolve conflicts
among either individuals or groups with destructive aggression. Individuals
or groups may injure, drive off, or kill opponents. Orangutans are usually
relatively solitary due to their enormous feeding demands, occasionally
coming together. When adult males encounter one another, aggressive dis-
plays, aggression, or avoidance usually occurs. With adult females, aggressive
displays, avoidance, or rarely bonding may occur. Sexually, there are two
male subtypes. The flanged, or larger variety, has massive jowls and other
secondary sexual characteristics females find attractive, and easily finds will-
ing sexual partners. The smaller subtype is less combative with its peers, but
usually mates by raping a female. Gorillas live in small groups headed by a
dominant male. Some males live solitary lives. The most typical aggressions
occur when a solo male tries to defeat a dominant male and take charge of
his group of females. When a new male takes over a group, infanticide to
bring the females into estrus has been reported.
Some have attempted to debunk the “myth” of bonobo peacefulness, citing
instances of bonobo aggression. However, notwithstanding these “mythbust-
ing” efforts, demonstrations of bonobo versus bonobo aggression remain
uncommon. They usually are observed among young bonobo males who
were not raised in integrated bonobo societies, separated by zookeepers or
naturalists from naturalistic bonobo groups, especially from adult females,
the powerful bonobo matriarchs. Similar breakdowns occur in other nor-
mally nonaggressive species subsequent to the undermining of their custom-
ary social structures and hierarchies (i.e., murderous attacks on rhinoceros by
young male elephants raised without the influence of mature bulls and
dominant females).
The species-wide distribution of this unique manner of conduct suggests it
is likely to have a genetic basis. Intact bonobo society normatively makes
assertive use of a pattern of sexual practices in a manner unique to their
species to address and resolve many of the conflict areas for which sexually
traumatized human DID patients deploy weaponized sex/instrumental
pseudo-erotic behaviors.
This raises an intriguing if highly speculative line of thought: Might it be
instructive to consider the possibility that what is normally genetically
determined in the bonobo might develop in the wake of epigenetic changes
in the traumatized human organism?
Both bonobos and traumatized humans who deploy such sexual strategies
eschew violence. Sexual behaviors serve to establish, strengthen, and
30
maintain connections. They enable individuals to both assert themselves and
exert damage control. In both instances, sex both replaces and deflects
destructive aggression. In the case of bonobo society, this strategy is effective
and promotes the safety of individuals and the well-being of the species.
However useful during horrific human childhoods, it is dubious that the
deployment of these strategies by adult human females is either effective or
useful to promote the safety of individuals and the well-being of the species.
From the normal bonobo to weaponized sex/instrumental

pseudo-erotic behaviors: Stepping stones toward a testable
hypothesis
Epigenetics concern potentially heritable changes in gene expression that do
not involve changes to underlying DNA sequences. Therefore, such changes
may create a change in phenotype without involving a change to the geno-
type. Epigenetic changes may occur naturalistically, but can also result from
aging, disease, environmental factors, and changes in lifestyle. Implicit in
these bland terms is the impact of trauma. Several processes have been
identified that initiate and/or support such changes. When we are changed
by factors in our lives, epigenetic changes underlie our transitions to new
adaptations, for better or for worse.
Years ago, Ernest Rossi (1986, 1993, 2002) explored the likelihood that
many physical and psychological problems might result from epigenetic
changes, and hypothesized that treatments that succeeded in affecting them
might have to exert their impact on a similar level. He sensitized the field of
hypnosis to such considerations and is regarded as a brilliant pioneer by hard
science geneticists (e.g., Muenke, 2015).
Compelling evidence that epigenetic change can affect massive alterations
in the types of phenomena considered crucial by developmentalists and
traumatologists is available in the work of Michael Meaney and his colleagues
(e.g., McGowan & Szyf, 2010; Meaney, 2001; Meaney & Szyf, 2005; Weaver
et al., 2004, 2005). They have demonstrated that exogenous stressors may
inactivate dominant genetically programmed maternal behaviors and/or acti-
vate elements that drive behavior in very different directions. Genetic lines
have been developed that enhance and minimize nurturing behaviors of
mothers rats. The enhanced positive maternal behaviors of genetically high
nurturing female rats can be inactivated by the application of exogenous
stress, and replaced by a pattern of less nurturing behaviors that had been
“bred out” of expression in the more nurturing genetic line. Further, such
trauma-altered expressions will manifest themselves in the traumatized rats’
female offspring, their genetic loading not withstanding. They will be less
nurturing as mature mother rats. However, if they are raised by a nurturing
surrogate mother rat, their genetically driven high nurturing behavior
31
patterns are reactivated. If litters of rat pups from the two genetically
divergent strains are divided, and equal numbers of genetically high nurtur-
ing rats and low nurturing rats are combined into two mixed litters, a high
nurturing rat mother will raise a mixed litter in which all of the female pups,
notwithstanding their genetic heritage, will mother their own pups in a
highly nurturing manner. Conversely, the female pups in the mixed litter
raised by the low nurturing mother rat will demonstrate low nurturing
behavior.
If trauma can inactivate normative attachment patterns and allow the
emergence of less desirable alternatives, could it facilitate the emergence
and elaboration of the strategies I have described as weaponized sex?
Ritualized submissive gestures are not uncommon within the animal king-
dom. They often include the submissive/defeated animals allowing itself to be
mounted by the dominant/victor animal (Sagan & Druyan, 1992). Could the
complex pattern of dysfunctional pseudo-erotic relatedness reflect the activa-
tion or disinhibition of usually suppressed/inactivated genetically driven or
facilitated strategies, including those of related to submission and affiliation?
Further, could the allostatic load of traumatization overwhelm the body/
brain/mind’s capacity to remain stable by changing adaptively (McEwen,
2000; McEwen & Steller, 1983), resulting in ongoing toxic genetic–environ-
mental interactions that lead to breakdown and dysfunctional changes along
the lines proposed by Meaney, McEwen, and their colleagues? Research in
such areas invariably would veer toward complexity theory in that (1) it
involves many interacting factors and systems; (2) the dynamics of impor-
tance may have subtle cause and effect connections that do not necessarily
remain constant; and (3) the degree and nature of the relationships between/
among various components are imperfectly known. Consequently, overall
outcomes/behaviors are difficult to predict even when components are well
known. Small changes in input or parameters may result in large changes of
behavior (developed from P. Ferreira, October, 2001).
Such perspectives might help us understand how a psychodynamically
diverse population exhibits a range of behaviors that have much in common,
raising the possibility that diverse triggers may activate a common and often
refractory epigenetically altered behavioral pathway.
While work like Meaney’s cannot be replicated with human subjects,
man’s inhumanity to man at times provides a crude albeit unsettling labora-
tory. Yehuda’s work (Yehuda & Bierer, 2009; Yehuda et al., 2013, 2014) has
demonstrated trangenerational epigenetic changes in the families of
Holocaust victims. The prospects for inducing epigenetic change via therapy
are being explored in a pilot study of cancer patients by Munoz (2015),
whose work appears to demonstrate that targeted hypnosis can alter the
expression of certain genes.
32
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
O ja d des a gueu s, ô po te d O e t!
Courtisane des Grecs, sultane agonisante,
Turban d’or et d’émail sous l’azur défaillant!
Tu joins l’odeur de l’ambre aux fastes exotiques,

Et tu meurs, des pigeons à ton sein agrafés,
Comme aux rives en feu des mers asiatiques,
La Basilique où dort sainte Pasiphaé!...
LA MESSE DE L’AURORE A VENISE
es femmes de Venise, au lever du soleil,
Répandent dans Saint-Marc leur hésitante extase;
Leurs châles ténébreux sous les arceaux vermeils
Semblent de noirs pavots dans un sublime vase.
Crucifix somptueux, Jésus des Byzantins,

Quel miel verserez-vous à ces pauvres ardentes,
Qui, pour vous adorer, désertent ce matin
Les ronds paniers de fruits étagés sous les tentes?
Si leur cœur délicat souffre de volupté,

Si leur amour est triste, inquiet ou coupable,
Si leurs vagues esprits, enflammés par l’été,
Rêvent du frais torrent des baisers délectables,
Que leur répondrez-vous, vous, leur maître et leur Dieu?

Tout en vous implorant, elles n’entendent qu’elles,
Et pensent que l’éclat allongé de vos yeux
Sourit à leurs naïfs sanglots de tourterelles.
Ah! quel que soit le mal qu’elles portent vers vous,

Quel que soit le désir qui les brûle et les ploie,
Comblez d’enchantement leurs bras et leurs genoux,
Puisque l’on ne guérit jamais que par la joie...
SIROCCO A VENISE
e sirocco, brusque, hardi,
Sur la ville en pierre frissonne;
C’est la fin de l’après-midi;
Ecoute les cloches qui sonnent
A Saint-Agnès, au Gesuati...
L’ouragan arrache la toile

D’un marché, où des paniers ronds
Débordent de brillants citrons
Que polit encor la rafale.
Je vois se saluer les cyprès d’un couvent;

Et dans le courant d’air des ruelles marines,
Un abbé vénitien, étourdi, gai, mouvant,
Qui retient son manteau, volant sur sa poitrine,
Semble un charmant Satan flagellé par le vent!
CLOCHES VÉNITIENNES
a pauvreté, la faim, le fardeau du soleil,
Le meurtrissant travail de cette enfant vieillie,
Qui respire, tressant l’osier jaune et vermeil,
L’odeur du basilic et de l’huile bouillie,
Les fétides langueurs des somnolents canaux,

La maison délabrée où pend une lessive,
Les fièvres et la soif, je les choisis plutôt
Que de ne pas tenir votre main chaude et vive
A l’heure où, s’exhalant comme un ardent soupir,

Les cloches de Venise épandent dans l’espace
Ce cri voluptueux d’alarme et de désir:
«Jouir, jouir du temps qui passe!»
L’ILE DES FOLLES A VENISE
a lagune a le dense éclat du jade vert.
Le noir allongement incliné des gondoles
Passe sur cette eau glauque et sous le ciel couvert.
Ce rose bâtiment, c’est la maison des folles.
Fleur de la passion, île de Saint-Clément,

Que de secrets bûchers dans votre enceinte ardente!
La terre desséchée exhale un fier tourment,
Et l’eau se fige autour comme un cercle du Dante.
Ce soir mélancolique où les cieux sont troublés,

Où l’air appesanti couve son noir orage,
J’entends ces voix d’amour et ces cœurs exilés
Secouer la fureur de leurs mille mirages!
Le vent qui fait tourner les algues dans les flots

Et m’apporte l’odeur des nuits de Dalmatie,
Guide jusqu’à mon cœur ces suprêmes sanglots.
O folie, ô sublime et sombre poésie!
Le rire, les torrents, la tempête, les cris

S’échappent de ces corps que trouble un noir mystère.
Quelle huile adoucirait vos torrides esprits,
Bacchantes de l’étroite et démente Cythère?
Cet automne, où l’angoisse, où la langueur m’étreint,

Un secret désespoir à tant d’ardeur me lie;
Déesse sans repos, sans limites, sans frein,
Je vous vénère, active et divine Folie!
Pleureuses des beaux soirs voisins de l’Orient,

Déchirez vos cheveux, égratignez vos joues,
éc e vos c eveu , ég at g e vos joues,
Pour tous les insensés qui marchent en riant,
Pour l’amante qui chante, et pour l’enfant qui joue.
O folles! aux judas de votre âpre maison

Posez vos yeux sanglants, contemplez le rivage.
C’est l’effroi, la stupeur, l’appel, la déraison,
Partout où sont des mains, des yeux et des visages.
Folles, dont les soupirs comme de larges flots

Harcèlent les flancs noirs des sombres Destinées,
Vous sanglotez du moins sur votre morne îlot;
Mais nous, les cœurs mourants, nous, les assassinées,
Nous rôdons, nous vivons; seuls nos profonds regards,

Qui d’un vin ténébreux et mortel semblent ivres,
Dénoncent par l’éclat de leurs rêves hagards
L’effroyable épouvante où nous sommes de vivre.
Par quelle extravagante et morne pauvreté,

Par quel abaissement du courage et du rêve
L’esprit conserve-t-il sa chétive clarté
Quand tout l’être éperdu dans l’abîme s’achève?
O folles, que vos fronts inclinés soient bénis!

Sur l’épuisant parcours de la vie à la tombe
Qui va des cris d’espoir au silence infini,
Se pourrait-il vraiment qu’on marche sans qu’on tombe?
Se pourrait-il vraiment que le courage humain,

Sans se rompre, accueillît l’ouragan des supplices?
Douleur, coupe d’amour plus large que les mains,
Avoir un faible cœur, et qu’un Dieu le remplisse!
Amazones en deuil, qui ne pouvez saisir
L’ineffable langueur éparse sur les mondes,
Sanglotez! A vos cris de l’éternel désir,
Des bords de l’infini les amants vous répondent...
NUIT VÉNITIENNE
eux étoiles d’argent éclairent l’ombre et l’eau,
On entend le léger clapotement du flot
Qui baise les degrés du palais Barbaro;
Une vague, en glissant, répond à l’autre vague:

Enlaçante tristesse, appel dolent et vague.
Un vert fanal, sur l’eau, tombe comme une bague.
Des gondoles s’en vont, paisible glissement.

Deux hommes sont debout et parlent en ramant;
On n’entend que la vague et leur voix seulement...
La nuit est comme un bloc d’agate monotone.

Un volet qu’on rabat, subitement détonne
Dans le silence. Où donc est morte Desdémone?
Un navire de guerre est amarré là-bas.

Le vent est si couché, si nonchalant, si bas,
Que le sel de la mer, ce soir, ne se sent pas.
Venise a la couleur dormante des gravures.

Sous le masque des nuits et sa noire guipure,
Deux mains, dans un jardin, ouvrent une clôture.
Les hauts palais dormants, aux marbres effrités,

Luisent sur le canal somnolent, arrêté,
Qui semble une liquide et molle éternité...
Belle eau d’un pâle enfer qui m’attire et me touche,

Puisque la mort, ce soir, n’a rien qui m’effarouche,
Montez jusqu’à mon cœur, montez jusqu’à ma bouche...
MIDI SONNE AU CLOCHER DE LA TOUR
SARRASINE
Ne recherche pas la cause de la turbulence:
c’est l’affaire de la mystérieuse nature...
idi sonne au clocher de la tour sarrasine.

Un calme épanoui pèse sur les collines;
Les palmes des jardins font insensiblement
Un geste de furtif et doux assentiment.
Le vent a rejeté ses claires arbalètes
Sur la montagne, entre la neige et les violettes!
Les rumeurs des hameaux ont le charme brouillé
D’une vague, glissant sur de blancs escaliers...
O calme fixité, que ceint un clair rivage,
L’Amour rayonne au centre indéfini des âges!
Un noir cyprès, creusé par la foudre et le vent,
Ondulant dans l’air tiède, officiant, rêvant,
Semble, par sa débile et céleste prière,
Un prophète expirant, entr’ouvert de lumière!
Aérienne idylle, envolement d’airain,
La cloche au chant naïf du couvent franciscain
Répond au tendre appel de la cloche des Carmes.
L’olivier, argenté comme un torrent de larmes,
Imite, en se courbant sous les placides cieux,
L’humble adoration des cœurs minutieux...
Quel vœu déposerai-je en vos mains éternelles,
Sainte antiquité grecque, ô Moires maternelles?
Déjà bien des printemps se sont ouverts pour moi.
Au pilier résineux de chacun de leurs mois
J’ai souffert ce martyre enivrant et terrible,
Près de qui le bonheur n’est qu’un ennui paisible...
Je ne verrai plus rien que je n’aie déjà vu.
Je meurs à la fontaine où mon désir a bu:
Les battements du cœur et les beaux paysages,
L’ouragan et l’éclair baisés sur un visage,
L’oubli de tout, l’espoir invincible, et plus haut
L oubli de tout, l espoir invincible, et plus haut
L’extase d’être un dieu qui marche sur les flots;
La gloire d’écouter, seule, dans la nature,
L’universelle Voix, dont la céleste enflure
Proclame dans l’azur, dans les blés, dans les bois,
«Ame, je te choisis et je me donne à toi,»
Tout cela qui frissonne et qui me fit divine,
Je ne le goûterai que comme un front s’incline
Sur le miroir, voilé par l’ombre qui descend,
Où déjà s’est penché son rire adolescent...
Mais la fougueuse vie en mon cœur se déchaîne:
O son des Angélus dans les faubourgs de Gênes,
Tandis qu’au bord des quais, où règne un lourd climat,
Les vaisseaux entassés, les cordages, les mâts,
Semblent, dans le ciel pâle où la chaleur s’énerve,
De noirs fuseaux, tissant la robe de Minerve!
Vieille fontaine arabe, au jet d’eau mince et long,
Exilée en Sicile, en de secrets vallons.
Soirs du lac de Némi, soirs des villas romaines,
Où la noble cascade en déroulant sa traîne
Sur un funèbre marbre, imite la pudeur
De la Mélancolie, errante dans ses pleurs,
Et qu’un faune poursuit sur la rapide pente...
Muet accablement d’un square d’Agrigente:
Jardin tout excédé de ses fleurs, où j’étais
La Mémoire en éveil d’un monde qui se tait.
Dans ce dormant Dimanche amolli et tenace,
Mêlée à l’étendue, éparse dans l’espace,
Etrangère à mon cœur, à mes pesants tourments,
Je n’étais plus qu’un vaste et pur pressentiment
De tous les avenirs, dont les heures fécondes
S’accompliront sans nous jusqu’à la fin des mondes...
Chaud silence; et l’élan que donne la torpeur!
L’air luit; le sifflement d’un bateau à vapeur
Jette son rauque appel à la rive marchande.
Une glu argentée entr’ouvre les amandes;
De lourds pigeons, heurtés aux arceaux d’un couvent,
Font un bruit éclatant de satin et de vent,
Comme un large éventail dans les nuits sévillanes
Comme un large éventail dans les nuits sévillanes...
Sur l’aride sentier, un pâtre sur un âne
Chantonne, avec l’habile et perfide langueur
D’une main qui se glisse et qui cherche le cœur...
Par ce cristal des jours, par ces splendeurs païennes,

Seigneur, préservez-nous de la paix quotidienne
Qui stagne sans désir, comme de glauques eaux!
Nous avons faim d’un chant et d’un bonheur nouveau!
Je sais que l’âpre joie en blessures abonde,
Je ne demande pas le repos en ce monde;
Vous m’appelez, je vais; votre but est secret;
Vous m’égarez toujours dans la sombre forêt;
Mais quand vous m’assignez quelque nouvel orage,
Merci pour le danger, merci pour le courage!
A travers les rameaux serrés, je vois soudain
La mer, comme un voyage exaltant et serein!
Je sais ce que l’on souffre, et si je suis vivante,
C’est qu’au fond de la morne ou poignante épouvante,
Lorsque parfois ma force extrême se lassait,
Un ange, au cœur cerclé de fer, me remplaçait...
Et pourtant, je ne veux pas amoindrir ma chance
D’être le lingot d’or qui brise la balance;
D’être, parmi les cœurs défaillants, incertains,
L’esprit multiplié qui répond au Destin!
Je n’ai pas peur des jours, du feu, du soir qui tombe;
Dans le désert, je suis nourrie par les colombes.
Je sais bien qu’il faudra connaître en vous un jour
La fin de tout effort, l’oubli de tout amour,
Nature! dont la paix guette notre agonie.
Mais avant cet instant de faiblesse infinie,

Traversant les plateaux, les torrents hauts ou secs,
Chantant comme faisaient les marins d’Ionie
Dans l’odeur du corail, du sel et du varech,
J’irai jusqu’aux confins de ces rochers des Grecs,
Où les flots démontés des colonnes d’Hercule
Engloutissaient les nefs, au vent du crépuscule!...

The Abused and The Abuser Victim Perpetrator Dynamics 1st Edition Warwick Middleton Adah Sachs Martin J Dorahy

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The Abused and The Abuser Victim Perpetrator Dynamics 1st Edition Warwick Middleton Adah Sachs Martin J Dorahy

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The abused and the abuser victim

perpetrator dynamics 1st Edition

The Golden Bell Tamar Sachs

A Critical Edition of Thomas Middleton s The Witch

The Practice of Engineering Dynamics 1st Edition Ronald

The Occult Basis of ASMR Tarl Warwick

Reframing The Perpetrator In Contemporary Comics: On

The Eurasian Steppe People Movement Ideas 1st Edition

The Good Enough Therapist Futility Failure and

Silent Victim 1st Edition Michael Wood

Martin J. Dorahy is Director of the clinical psychology programme at the

Introduction – The abused and the abuser: Victim–perpetrator

1 Weaponized sex: Defensive pseudo-erotic aggression in the

2 Extreme adaptations in extreme and chronic circumstances:

3 Conflicts between motivational systems related to

4 Through the lens of attachment relationship: Stable DID,

5 Dying for love: An attachment problem with some

6 Predicting a dissociative disorder from type of childhood

8 Shame as a compromise for humiliation and rage in the

9 Knowing and not knowing: A frequent human arrangement 155

10 Mother–child incest, psychosis, and the dynamics of relatedness 167

11 Dissociation in families experiencing intimate partner violence 185

12 Organized abuse in adulthood: Survivor and professional perspectives 199

13 Treatment strategies for programming and ritual abuse 212

14 Issues in consultation for treatments with distressed activated

15 Robert Fliess, Wilhelm Fliess, Sándor Ferenczi, Ernest Jones, and

End note – A personal perspective: The response to

For any permission-related enquiries please visit:

Richard A. Chefetz is a psychiatrist in private practice. He was President of the

Cogently Fliess went on to reflect,

On July 7, 2014, the British government, under sustained pressure from

Weaponized sex: Defensive pseudo-erotic aggression in

Clinical encounters with weaponized sex/instrumental

I left unsaid that anyone who would present in such an over-the-top

From the normal bonobo to weaponized sex/instrumental

Tu joins l’odeur de l’ambre aux fastes exotiques,

Crucifix somptueux, Jésus des Byzantins,

Si leur cœur délicat souffre de volupté,

Que leur répondrez-vous, vous, leur maître et leur Dieu?

Ah! quel que soit le mal qu’elles portent vers vous,

L’ouragan arrache la toile

Je vois se saluer les cyprès d’un couvent;

Les fétides langueurs des somnolents canaux,

A l’heure où, s’exhalant comme un ardent soupir,

Fleur de la passion, île de Saint-Clément,

Ce soir mélancolique où les cieux sont troublés,

Le vent qui fait tourner les algues dans les flots

Le rire, les torrents, la tempête, les cris

Cet automne, où l’angoisse, où la langueur m’étreint,

Pleureuses des beaux soirs voisins de l’Orient,

O folles! aux judas de votre âpre maison

Folles, dont les soupirs comme de larges flots

Nous rôdons, nous vivons; seuls nos profonds regards,

Par quelle extravagante et morne pauvreté,

O folles, que vos fronts inclinés soient bénis!

Se pourrait-il vraiment que le courage humain,

Une vague, en glissant, répond à l’autre vague:

Des gondoles s’en vont, paisible glissement.

9 Knowing and not knowing: A frequent human arrangement 155

10 Mother–child incest, psychosis, and the dynamics of relatedness 167

11 Dissociation in families experiencing intimate partner violence 185

12 Organized abuse in adulthood: Survivor and professional perspectives 199

13 Treatment strategies for programming and ritual abuse 212